


She Comes at Night

by florencedrunk (spokenitalics)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Chocobox 2018 Treat, F/F, Introspection, POV First Person, Selkies, human/non-human - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-04 19:02:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13371144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spokenitalics/pseuds/florencedrunk
Summary: Why are people afraid of the sea?





	She Comes at Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/gifts).



> Thanks to the brilliant [Airheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Airheart) for betaing this fic!

She comes at night, and her lips taste like salt. Yet her kisses are sweet like I've never known before.

"Beware of what the sea brings to shore after a storm," my grandmother used to say. That never stopped me or my brothers from running across the wet sand as soon as the clouds started to part. And in those moments of quiet, among tree trunks like skeletons of beached animals and stones shaped by the deepest darkness, I felt like I knew peace. As if time had stopped and the whole world had fallen asleep for a moment that would never end.

One morning, we found a body on the beach. It was a man with a big red beard and skin so pale it almost looked blue. A sailor carried by the current after a shipwreck, probably, with lungs full of water and eyes empty of everything he used to be. There were many other bodies after him — men, women, children — and I'm sure there had been many before him, before I could remember, before I was even born.

I still dream of him, sometimes, and of those other nameless, lifeless bodies. I dream about struggling against the current, about the sea carrying me astray, about the ice growing inside my bones. When I gasp awake, hands to my throat as I sit up on my bed, _she_ 's there. She never asks, never needs to. She just _knows_ , just like I know who she is, what she wants, what she's done for me.

If my youngest brother had met her, he would've buried her with questions: "Where are you from? What's your name? Why did you let me drown?"

He was the most curious person I've ever know, always asking, always wondering, always poking his nose in matters that he should've been way too young to understand. I remember I was playing with him once, when he was small and our home was still full of noises and people, and at one point, he looked up and asked, "Why are people afraid of the dark?"

"How do you know you're not the only one who is?" I asked back. I knew he hated when people did that.

"I know I'm not," he said, crossing his arms, waiting.

I took a deep breath. "I guess people are just scared of what they don't know, or can't know."

"It's the same thing with the sea, then, isn't it?"

I suppose it is. Both are unknown, unknowable, filled with man-made monsters hiding under beds and in the songs of the sailors.

My father loved those songs and loved singing them even more. He was a terrible singer, but a very good sailor. He taught my brothers how to navigate the stars, how to recognise the signs of a coming storm, the names of the gods to pray to before leaving home, and the ones to never mention while on the water. He was preparing them to take his place when the time came, I know that, but he never taught me anything. Or he did, because I always listened, even if he was never talking to me.

My mother never sang, but she did have a song of her own. When the moon was full and the sea looked like it was made of silver, and only if my father was away from home, she'd take me to the beach and ask me, "Can you hear it?"

I tried. Every time, I'd close my eyes and try to find that sound in the crashing waves and in the roaring skies and even in the sand beneath my feet. But I never could. So I'd shake my head and watch her eyes fill with disappointment. That's how I remember her, even now — looking out to the horizon, bathing in moonlight, crying because I couldn't hear her song.

Everyone always said I looked just like her, but I couldn't see it. Growing up, I was the only girl in a house full of boys, always running and screaming and scraping my knees. When I looked at my mother, I saw someone who was delicate, soft-spoken, graceful in a way I could only dream to be. If I was fire, she was water. If I was wind, she was earth. It was like there was a veil between us, made of all the thing we didn't say, and of all the times we didn't hug, and of all the ways we drove each other crazy.

And then, she died. On the day of the funeral, I caught sight of my reflection and saw her looking back at me. She was on the other side of the mirror, with the same red hair as me, the same brown eyes as me, the same tears rolling down her face as me. There _I_ was, looking just like her. It seemed, in the end, sadness was what made us alike.

The morning after, I was on the ship with my father and my brothers. I saw my home disappear in the fog and felt the wind caress my skin. Up above, the sky was grey and cloudless. Down under, darkness awaited.

Now, the house is empty, and it seems it's finally quiet enough for me to hear my mother's song. That old symphony of thunder and waves crashing onto rocks echoes through the corridors and finds me in my room, filling the air with the smells of salt, of burnt wood, of dust after rain. And on those same nights, when the moon is full the sea looks like it's made of silver, _she_ comes.

She wears her pelt like a cloak around her naked body and lets it fall onto the floor as she climbs into bed with me. In the dark, her breaths become my breaths, and as my hands brush against her soft skin, I forget. Forget who I am, what I've been through, how heavy this heart of mine is. She makes it beat faster, my heart, in a way it hasn't beaten in a long, long time. I can hear hers, too, always calm, always steady. Almost always.

"Don't you ever get lonely?" she asks as we're both lying on the bed, energy slowly crawling back into our bodies. "All alone, in this big house..."

"I would have left if I did," I tell her, looking straight into her eyes. "What about you? Is that the reason you come here? Loneliness?"

"No," she answers, turning to the ceiling. "But would it be a bad thing if it were?"

"Not at all," I say, leaving a kiss on her shoulder. Then, the words appear in my mind, and before I know it, they're rolling off my tongue: "Why, do you think, are people afraid of the sea?"

She smiles. "Once you let it take you, it'll never let go."

Just before sunrise, she kisses me on the forehead, takes her pelt from the floor, and dives back into the sea. But she always returns, salt shining on her skin and eyes full of tenderness. I don't know her name, but I think she knows mine. I don't know where she lives, but she always finds her way to me. If I were more like my youngest brother, I'd ask her, "Why me?"

Why did she save _me_ , out of all of us? Why did I wake up alone on the shore, as my father and brothers drowned deep under the sea? Why was I the only one the storm brought back home?

 


End file.
